Terrorism

Today the Army announced that Bowe Bergdahl will be court-martialed on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Given the public comments of his platoon mates on the deal that resulted in his release, the file that supports the charges brought against him must be staggering. Who can forget the celebration that President Obama orchestrated with Bergdahl’s parents at the White House to mark his return, or national security »

CIA Director John Brennan appeared for an interview on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace (video below, 22 minutes). At the outset of the interview, Wallace asked tough questions related to the deal in process with Iran. In context, despite the gravity of the questions, Brennan’s expressions of comfort and assurance on the part of President Obama and Secretary Kerry come across almost laughable. At 5:00, Wallace asks Brennan which »

Yesterday’s New York Times featured Scott Shane’s long page-one article “From Minneapolis to ISIS: An American’s path to jihad.” Shane explores the departure of Abdi Nur from Minneapolis to join ISIS in Syria. Nur comes from the Twin Cities’ large and still growing Somali community. Shane wanders off to discuss the cases of others who have left the United States to sign on with ISIS. Here is the local angle: »

Tonight 60 Minutes broadcast a segment on the persecution of Christians and Christianity by ISIS in Iraq (video below). The segment was reported by correspondent Lara Logan. CBS News has posted a transcript of the segment here. The emergence of ISIS in Iraq is attributed to the withdrawal of American forces by President Obama in 2011 by one of Logan’s eloquent Christian interlocutors at one point; she carefully attributes equal »

Appearing on Greta Van Susteren’s FOX News show last night, Catherine Herridge and John Bolton followed up on the disappearance of Iran and Hezbollah from the list of terror threats 2015 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community issued by the Director of National Intelligence (video below, also posted here along with a partial transcript). I believe the disappearance was first reported here by the Times of Israel. Ambassador Bolton »

Avijit Roy, a native of Bangladesh, was an engineer by training, an atheist, the proprietor of a web site, and the author of a number of books. Recently, he has lived in the United States, but has been threatened with death by radical Muslims because of his religious and social views. His wife, Rafida Ahmed Bonna, was raised as a Muslim but supported Roy’s work as an atheist. Earlier today, »

Three men, two in Brooklyn and one in Florida, have been arrested as two of them were about to depart for Turkey to join ISIS. Their names are Abror Habibov, Abdurasul Juraboev and Akhror Saidakhmetov; Juraboev and Habibov are from Uzbekistan, while Saidakhmetov is from Kazakhstan. Saidakhmetov is a legal permanent U.S. resident. Habibov entered the U.S. legally, but overstayed his visa. As has usually been the case with domestic »

An Arab practitioner of violent extremism attacked an Israeli Jew in Jerusalem on Sunday. The practitioner was wielding a knife; the attack took place at Tzahal Square in central Jerusalem. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and his security detail happened to be on the spot and swung into action. A bodyguard pulled his gun and the mayor tackled the terrorist. The Jerusalem Post reports the story here. As the Mall of »

There is at best one degree of separation between the Palestinian Authority or the PLO and the terrorist attacks carried out in Israel by Palestinian Arabs. A federal jury in Manhattan returned a verdict against the PA/PLO in favor of American plaintiffs injured as a result of terrorist attacks carried out in Israel between between 2002 and 2004. The New York Times reports: The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation »

Al-Shabab, the Somalian terrorist group loosely affiliated with al Qaeda, carried out an attack on a shopping mall in Kenya in 2013. Al-Shabab has now released a video that urges its followers in North America and the United Kingdom to execute similar terrorist attacks, including a specific call for an attack on the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota: “Be particularly careful” if you intend to visit the Mall of »

Andy McCarthy points out that, even as the White House throws “a public hissy fit” over the upcoming speech to Congress by Benjamin Netanyahu, it chooses to be “chummy” with Salam al-Marayati, the Muslim activist best known for saying, right after the 9/11 attacks, that we should put the State of Israel on the suspect list. You have to hand it Obama, he knows who his friends are. It’s America’s »

“Defender of the Faith” is one of the British sovereign’s titles. Of course, Britain has an official faith, the Church of England. The United States has no state religion, and if it did, it wouldn’t be Islam. Nevertheless, Barack Obama and his minions have set themselves up as official interpreters and defenders of the Muslim faith. This doesn’t stop with insisting that Islam has nothing–nothing!–to do with Islamic terrorism. Here »

The cover of today’s New York Post seems like news all by itself. It gives us a sort of emperor-has-no-clothes moment. Geoff Earle’s story on Obama’s keynote speech at the Countering Violent Extremism Summit yesterday afternoon is the subject. Jonathan Tobin comments on Obama’s speech in the Post column “Obama dances around reality as ISIS plays the tune.” I have linked the text and posted the video of Obama’s speech »

Deputy State Department spokesman Marie Harf gives the catastrophic foreign policy of the Obama administration a lighter than air, Valley Girl kind of feel. She is a walking self-parody. As such, she presents a novel use of expressive form. The attention Harf has earned this week with her explanation of the Obama administration’s approach to ISIS gives us an occasion to meditate on her deep meaning. National Review’s Kevin Williamson »

Yesterday Barack Obama had an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times titled, “Our fight against violent extremism.” It was intended, I think, as a prelude to the White House summit on Countering Violent Extremism–no particular extremism, just the violent kind–that is now under way. Obama articulated his vision for how we can defeat “violent extremism”: In Syria and Iraq, the terrorist group we call ISIL has slaughtered innocent civilians and »

Michael Ramirez piles on the hapless Marie Harf and her oh-so-nuanced jobs for jihadis plan: We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs… Click to enlarge: Can anyone think of a war that has been won by anyone, any time, any »